Jokowi's hope and change begins an optimistic chapter for Indonesia's young democracy

Jakarta: The day after Indonesian voters produced a tight and heavily contested presidential election result, two distinct views emerged about what would happen next.

A pessimist, I wrote at the time, would believe losing candidate Prabowo Subianto could use shady connections, street violence and unlimited resources to “try to buy or bully the Election Commission” during its two-week counting period to alter the result.

An optimist, by contrast “would say that Indonesia is no longer like this".

“There are too many watchful eyes, too many democrats, a robust free press, people prepared to speak out if they see something wrong. And in this election season so far, it’s the optimists who have won out every time.”

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Two weeks later, the optimists have indeed prevailed. The streets have remained quiet; incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono acted as he should by calming the situation; the official election tally was shadowed and cross-checked by an online flashmob of citizen psephologists; and the attempts by the Prabowo camp to sway the Electoral Commission failed, both before and after his supporters staged a walk-out on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the official result was announced.

By Tuesday night Joko was declared the winner with a (slightly larger than expected) margin of 6.3 percentage points - a solid 8.4 million votes more than his rival.

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It was fitting, therefore, that in his victory speech an hour or so later, Joko, known universally as Jokowi, called the Indonesian people to optimism, asked that they mend the divisions engendered by a hard-fought campaign and then revel in their new reality.

“This presidential election has provoked fresh optimism in the Indonesian nation. An independent soul and sense of political responsibility blossoms in … the new generation. Their enthusiasm - which had sunk into torpor - has now returned.”

And again: “It’s now our responsibility to prove to ourselves, to other nations and especially to our children and our grandchildren, that politics is full of fun; politics has some wisdom. Politics is freedom.”

The words came as a revelation. They were the first Obama-like moments in a campaign that had started six months earlier. Until then, the rhetoric had been on Prabowo’s side about fear and national pride, and on Jokowi’s (to the extent that he said anything at all) about pragmatism and problem-solving.

He’s hardly an Obama where speeches are concerned, but going back to Jokowi’s time as mayor of Solo, then as Jakarta governor, his interviews are peppered with references to optimism.

It’s been said many times, but Jokowi represents a new thread in Indonesian politics. He was born and grew up poor. He made his own way in the world using education and hard work, and not through the army, which was the traditional route for other ambitious but low-born youngsters including Suharto himself and Yudhoyono.

Jokowi with his mentor and matriarch of the PDI party, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Photo: AFP

Jokowi built a business, became an entrepreneur and was pressed into politics by other businessmen wanting to clean up the intricate and dispiriting regulations that blighted their lives.

There could have been no clearer delineation between the old order (known, confusingly, in Indonesia, as the New Order), represented by Prabowo Subianto, a former general and Suharto son-in-law, and Jokowi, the ordinary, self-made man. As his TV ad said "Jokowi is us": it did not even feature his image.

His victory is the first step in the attempt by these "small people" - orang kecil - to wrest power away from an interlinked and corrupt political elite.

But it’s just a first step, and only a true optimist would embark on the trudge that lies ahead. To even begin, Jokowi must deal with a fractious and venal parliament in which he, at this point, does not control a majority. Doing the deals necessary to pass laws and govern in such an environment could quickly be seen to taint a cleanskin like him.

Like Barack Obama, Jokowi has set expectations sky high, and as the American president has found, disappointed hopes are as toxic politically as genuine hope is enlivening.

Then there is the infamous Indonesian bureaucracy, where corruption has become so deeply rooted that it’s both a culture and a financial model. Here optimism (alongside good sense) comes to die.

Ordinary Indonesian people keenly want a Hercules to take on these tasks. But vested interests are many and even baseline support for Jokowi from his own, sclerotic party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and its dominating matriarch, Megawati Sukarnoputri, cannot be guaranteed. From the start they have been ambivalent about their own choice of candidate because he sits outside their patronage networks and represents a rival to the Sukarno bloodline (represented in his generation by Megawati’s resentful daughter, Puan Maharani).

In fact, Jokowi owes his election victory more to a group of influential supporters outside the party and a huge band of volunteers than to the party itself. It first muffed his nomination then very nearly trashed the hottest political property Indonesia has seen since Sukarno. (Election observer Kevin Evans believes the volunteers will, in frustration, coalesce into their own Jokowi party and leave Megawati and her band of influence-peddlers behind.)

None of these problems were a mystery to Jokowi - he’s made headway in both Solo and Jakarta in spite of them.

And still he can describe politics as “fun”.

One man in Indonesia this week, though, was having no fun at all. Prabowo Subianto has made three attempts over 12 years to become president, only to be beaten by a man taking his first tilt. Jokowi is 10 years Prabowo’s junior, has $158 million less in the bank and was raised on a riverbank.

To add to the insult, Prabowo was instrumental in plucking Jokowi from his provincial mayoralty and handing him a national stage as Jakarta Governor in 2012.

Prabowo’s response from the moment the polls closed on July 9 has been denial and now he will challenge the result in the Constitutional Court.

But there is reason for optimism here, too. Firstly, it suggests that Prabowo, despite putatively having the power to do so, never took the fight to the streets. Either he has reformed, or more likely, he realised that democracy has sunk too deeply into Indonesia’s DNA and a brawl would merely have damaged him.

Secondly, in the words of George Bernard Shaw: “All progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

We’ll see what evidence Prabowo can muster of what he says is widespread misbehaviour during the election process that affects up to 21 million votes, but some of his complaints about vulnerabilities in the system are real. This is partly due to an electoral law that is both overly detailed and vague.

People vote outside their area with insufficient identification; villagers in West Papua use the “noken” system (under which the village head decides who everybody will vote for, then votes for them); voters cast their ballot by puncturing the papers, which are then counted by hand, after which the numbers are collated in a tortuous, five-stage “recapitulation” process where, at every stage, the prospect of fraud is real.

Prabowo is the quintessential “unreasonable man” - determined, obsessive and in possession of unlimited funds. Unless the extraordinary happens, his legal challenge is almost guaranteed not to decide the result (unlike the infamous Bush-Gore US election of 2000). However, the Constitutional Court might take the opportunity to iron out some of the problems in Indonesia's voting system, making it more robust and incorruptible for the future.

This is a young democracy holding only its third direct presidential election, but that would help entrench fairness in the system, placing it well ahead of much older systems such as that, for example, which the United States still clings to.